As a U.S. Senate candidate in August 2006, Bob Corker promoted the Republican Party line on the war in Iraq, urging civilians to listen to generals on the ground and opposing a timetable for the removal of American troops.
“We’ve got a country that needs to be stabilized so that the Middle East does not end up being totally destabilized,” he said at the time.
This year, with a Democratic president pushing American military involvement in another Middle Eastern powder keg – Libya – Tennessee’s junior senator has abandoned the go-with-it approach.
On April 5, Corker sent a letter to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, requesting hearings to examine the president’s war powers.
Nine days later, Corker wrote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to get information on “the operations and political future of Libya,” according to a news release from his office in Washington, D.C.